The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Referring now to FIG. 1, a network device 100 comprises a physical layer (PHY) module 102, a medium access control (MAC) module 104, and a processor 106. The network device 100 may communicate with other network devices in a network (not shown) via a communication medium 108. The network may include an Ethernet network. The communication medium may include wireline or wireless medium.
The PHY module 102 interfaces the network device 100 to the communication medium 108. The PHY module 102 transmits and receives data via the communication medium 108. The MAC module 104 controls access to the communication medium 108. The MAC module 104 performs various functions. The functions may include encrypting data to be transmitted from the network device 100 and decrypting data received by the network device 100.
The processor 106 processes the data to be transmitted and the data received. The processor 106 may execute applications including multimedia applications. The types of applications may depend on the capabilities of the network device 100 and the operations performed by the network device 100.